In yesterday’s blog, I introduced (or maybe reintroduced) you to the concept of the ‘habit loop’.
What were the four parts again?
Hopefully you immediately said “Cue – Craving – Response – Reward”
In today’s blog, I’m going to look at the ‘cue’.
It’s the thing that initiate the chain of thought in our heads that leads us to do the thing.
The ‘trigger’ if you will.
You’ll already have these for your other habits, probably without realising.
– It’s a certain time of day
– Maybe we’ve arrived in a certain place
– We’ve seen something
– We’ve just done something else
– Someone said something
– We feel a certain way
– We’ve had some sort of reminder
Ultimately, something has happened that’s kicked off the thoughts that will lead to us doing the action
For something we want to do more of and create a habit around, we want to make that cue as OBVIOUS as possible.
The thing we want to stop doing, or do less of, we want to make that cue HIDDEN.
Obvious.
Hidden.
If we just remember “Cue – Obvious – Hidden” we’ll stand a reasonable chance of actually doing something with this.
So for the thing that you want to create a habit around, when will it happen?
A clear ‘implementation intention’.
When X, I will Y.
Is it when it’s a certain time, you arrive at a certain place, you’ve just done a specific thing, you feel a certain way, etc?
A clearly defined and as obvious and visible as possible ‘cue’ will stop us essentially just forgetting to do it.
And for the thing that you want to do less of or stop, identify that cue.
What’s the ‘trigger’ that initiates that chain of events?
And how can you hide that as much as possible?
We don’t have the food out so that seeing it makes us want to eat it.
We don’t go to that place or do that other thing.
We delete the app or hide it or another page.
We put things in place so that we’re less likely to feel a certain way.
We change our environment and what we see and hear.
Ultimately, there’s no right or wrong here.
But what I can guarantee you is that approaching habit creation or change in a more structured way will make it much more likely.
Make the cue of the habit you want to reduce or stop as hidden as possible.
Or a clearly defined the cue for the habit you want to create and make it as obvious as possible.
Much love,
Jon ‘Steve Davies’ Hall
P.S The cue to you initiating a chain of events that will change your life for the better is me telling you to apply for our risk free trial here —> www.myrise.co..uk/apply
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RISE in Macclesfield was established in 2012 and specialise in Group Personal Training weight loss programmes for those that don’t like the gym and find diets boring and restrictive!
